Kaiser Permanente caregivers pledge to vote for SEIU-UHW

The majority of Kaiser Permanente caregivers voting in a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election that starts this week have pledged to vote for Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers-West (SEIU-UHW), according to member-organizers across California who have collected pledge cards from their co-workers.

“We've made our jobs some of the best in the industry by working together in our union, SEIU-UHW. Why would we risk all of that and have to re-bargain our contract? Not now, not in this economy.”

"I'm voting for SEIU-UHW to protect our guaranteed raises, family health insurance and job security," said Les Harris, a physical therapy assistant at Kaiser Los Angeles Medical Center for 22 years. "We've made our jobs some of the best in the industry by working together in our union, SEIU-UHW. Why would we risk all of that and have to re-bargain our contract? Not now, not in this economy."

Another union, the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) is seeking to represent Kaiser workers and filed a petition with the NLRB that triggered the mail ballot election. Ballots will be mailed to 43,000 union members on September 13, are due back to the NLRB offices in Oakland on October 4 and will be counted October 6.

Thousands of SEIU-UHW members at Kaiser backed their elected 121-member SEIU-UHW negotiating team to win a new two-year national agreement that goes into effect October 1, 2010 and guarantees 9% wage increases, family healthcare with no cost increases and job security protections not found anywhere else in the industry.

"SEIU-UHW is the union we've built at Kaiser over the last 65 years and we're uniting as never before to keep it that way," said Jon Duff, a lead respiratory therapist at Kaiser Vallejo, who is one of thousands of member-organizers working on the statewide campaign.